Ahimsa

Genny Lim 

SAN FRANCISCO,
California, US

Genny Lim is a native San Franciscan poet, performer, playwright, educator and cultural activist whose artistic vision strives to express the uniqueness and universality of her experience as the child of immigrant Chinese, deeply engaged in the civil rights and Asian American arts movement since the early 1970s. Her work has always been deeply informed by her commitment to social justice issues on many fronts. Her two books of poetry, Winter Place (1989, Kearny Street Workshop) and Child of War (2003, Kalamaku Press) have been widely recognized for defining a distinctive Asian American voice in the Bay Area and international literary landscape. Her award-winning play about Angel Island immigrants, Paper Angels aired on American Playhouse in 1995 and the anthology she co-authored, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, brought national attention to institutional racism against immigrants. Bitter Cane, a second play set in the Hawaiian sugar plantations of the 1920s, has also been published and performed nationally and overseas. She also been commissioned to create a libretto for Jon Jang’s Immigrant Suite; and poetry for Francis Wong’s, Shanghai 1948. Her work has been featured on the PBS series, The United States of Poetry; and KQED's feature, San Francisco Chinatown.

Ah-I walk with a gun, 

With a gun to my heart, with a gun to my head, 

with a gun to my heart to kill, 

To kill with a gun, my hurt, 

To kill with my hurt, a gun 

I speak like the many-mouthed bird, 

Like the many-mouthed bird with words 

that fly, that sting, in all directions, 

That fly like the winds, that fly like bullets, 

like bullets into the proud flesh of my youth, 

into the proud flesh of my wound, my womb, my wound 

Himsa - the wish to kill, the wish to kill 

The wish to behead this rage in me 

This he, not me; this she, not me 

This white buffalo of hate, this black brick of my heart 

My heart, which I remember 

My heart, which I dismember 

My heart which I bequeath to death 

My heart, which I bequeath to reason 

and to the empty orgasms of power 

Ahimsa 

To love with action, to act with love 

Towards all, towards all 

Animal, vegetable and human 

Ahimsa, Ahimsa, Ahimsa 

To Rosa Parks and Birmingham Sunday 

To Malcolm X and Martin Luther King 

To Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama 

To Rigoberta Menchu and Mother Theresa 

To Thich Nat Han and Mahatma Gandhi 

To Ang San Syu Kyi 

We give truth to guard eternally 

Ah-I walk with a gun, 

With a gun to my heart, With a gun to my head, 

With a gun to my heart, With a gun to my head, 

To kill my hurt, to hurt my kill 

Because I am the many-mouthed bird, 

The many-mouthed bird, whose name will be 

forgotten